This Week's 'The List' -- 'America 24/7'

Oct. 26 -- — A weekly feature on This Week.

Voices

The List's "Voices" is from a book that comes out this week. America 24/7 is collection of photographs taken in one week by 25,000 people. Included in this remarkable book is an essay by Roger Rosenblatt, of PBS' NewsHour, on how Americans approach and express faith.

Roger Rosenblatt, adapted from America 24/7:

"America is the most religious country in the industrialized world, and the most shook-up about it. Ever since Jefferson and Madison separated church from state, it freed Americans to be as religious as we wanted. And we wanted.

We have old-line churches and store-front churches. We have liberal and conservative Catholicism, at least three levels of Judaism, and countless Protestant variations. We have Muslims, Buddhists, Shintos, and Native American religions. We have cults, sects, people who set themselves up as gods. We pledge allegiance under God. In God we trust. We go to court, so help us God. We go to war with God on our side. When a president becomes a president, God is at hand.

With all that, the national nerves get jangled every time religion is spoken of publicly. Everybody seems to be doing that these days. Some of the reasons are obvious. The rise of evangelical churches with the absence of mediation between God and the individual made it more inviting for people to declare their faith. On TV, in mega-churches with basketball arena seating, vast choirs sang religion loud and clear. And Christian television and radio networks sprang up and filled the air.

Then, too, there was the end of the Cold War, which many Americans saw as the victory of God over the godless. All this adds to our consistent turmoil about religion, which at different times in American history has taken distinctly different emotional turns. Sometimes we're fearful and doubtful about religion, thus the figure of the sinful clergyman (buttressed, of course, by the recent sex scandals in the Catholic Church). Sometimes we make fun of religion. Sometimes we embrace it with the deepest devotion, sometimes we regard it with the deepest suspicion. Usually, we view religion with a little of both.